Morgrave University
Educational institution · Campus: Dalannan Tower, Upper Menthis, Sharn · University Master: Larrian ir'Morgrave
"A beacon of knowledge shining from the tallest towers of the city." — Lord Lareth ir'Morgrave, founding charter of Morgrave University
Three people died on Hass Holan's last "extra credit" expedition, and there is a sphinx in the attic above the Registrar's office.
That sentence tells you most of what you need to know about Morgrave University. It is the largest educational institution in Sharn, the city's most visible engine of scholarship, and an institution whose reputation is inseparable from allegations of smuggling, black-market dealing, and the quiet conversion of looted antiquities into respectable academic property. It is infamous for indulging in dungeon delves and dangerous expeditions as "field trips." Its collections of artifacts and scholarly works relating to Xen'drik and the Dhakaan Empire are unparalleled anywhere on the continent. Its library is the most extensive in all of Breland. And it is, by fairly open consensus, a second-rate university apparently as interested in selling antiquities from Xen'drik as in studying them — but one that nonetheless produces an impressive number of wizards and artificers, driven by a tradition of encouraging students to personalize their techniques in ways that occasionally produce startling results.
Morgrave is not the most prestigious university in the Five Nations — that distinction belongs to the University of Wynarn — but it is somehow the most famous. The friction between those two facts defines much of the institution's character. Where Arcanix is closer to Hogwarts — isolated, floating, dedicated to a single arcane discipline — Morgrave is right in the middle of Sharn, so there is all sorts of opportunity for trouble just off campus. Because Morgrave is a general-purpose institution rather than a specialist college of magic, any class of adventurer can justify a connection to it: a noble studying antiquities, an urchin who earned a scholarship, a criminal whose parents run a Boromar smuggling operation, or an entertainer studying drama.
FROM THE SHARN INQUISITIVE
PROFITS TRUMP PROMISES AT BLACK MARKET UNIVERSITY
In response to last week's exclusive report detailing a scheme to remove precious antiquities from storage at Morgrave University and sell them on the black market, Master Larrian ir'Morgrave has issued a statement full of the usual platitudes and empty promises we have grown accustomed to hearing from the Office of the University Master. In it, ir'Morgrave vows to put an end to the criminal activities occurring within the university and bolster the school's academic reputation. As regular readers of this paper know, he makes such promises frequently, but we have yet to see him take any substantive action to back up his promises.
History
Morgrave was founded by Lord Lareth ir'Morgrave, whose avowed mission was to build a university that would serve as "a beacon of knowledge shining from the tallest towers of the city." That founding vision has never entirely disappeared. The university has produced genuine scholars and sponsored real discoveries.
It is also said that Lord Morgrave himself made his fortune selling Dhakaani artifacts on the black market, and that the university was, at least in part, designed to give that enterprise institutional cover. This founding ambiguity has never been resolved. The pattern it established — aggressive acquisition, flexible ethics, results rewarded over methods — has persisted through every subsequent administration.
"An institute of learning, relic hunting, and grave robbing." — attributed to administrators of the University of Wynarn, Fairhaven
Campus and Facilities
Morgrave University fills Dalannan Tower in Upper Menthis, crowned by the enormous dome of Lareth Hall. Five slender spires ring the tower, representing and named after the Five Nations, housing most of the student body. The university owns most of the buildings in Upper Menthis even beyond those directly used for academic purposes. The ward's character — wealthy, educated, dense with sages, scribes, and scholars from across Khorvaire — is largely a product of the university's presence.
Lareth Hall sits at the top of Dalannan Tower within the great dome, housing the administrative and faculty offices, the office of University Master Larrian ir'Morgrave, and — in a chamber at the top of the dome — the residence of Flamewind, a gynosphinx and scholar of the Draconic Prophecy who is not officially affiliated with the university but has made it her home.
The Morgrave University Library occupies the upper levels of Dalannan Tower just below the dome. It is the most extensive collection of books in Breland, with particular depth in arcana, dungeoneering, geography, and history — the library's definitive specialty. Its collections on Xen'drik and the Dhakaan Empire are unmatched. It pales in comparison to the great Library of Korranberg, but a significant community of Zilargo expatriates settled in the nearby gnome neighborhood of Den'iyas contributes actively to making the Morgrave Library the best resource it can be. Non-affiliated visitors pay a fee of one gold piece per day to use the library; students, faculty, and those employed by Morgrave use it freely. Characters seeking knowledge in any field should be able to find resources in the library to assist their search, and the university is an excellent resource for hiring sages on a short- or long-term basis.
The Dezina Museum of Antiquities occupies the mid-levels of Dalannan Tower and is home to the finest collection of Xen'drik artifacts in Khorvaire — or would be, were it not for the strong tendency the university has to sell valuable artifacts rather than put them on display, not to mention the steady stream of items routinely stolen from the museum. What remains on public view is impressive. What sits in the vaults below — vast rooms containing unopened crates of treasures waiting to be cataloged, shelves of artifacts deemed uninteresting, and a few secret rooms holding items too important or dangerous for public display — is more impressive still. The museum's curator is an elf named Emeron Sennared, who might be a personal friend, former teacher, or simply a patron willing to indulge an adventurer's enthusiasm for antiquities and exotic locations.
The Great Hall of Aureon is the grand temple to the god of knowledge on campus, an architectural marvel and a functioning sacred site. Scholars, scientists, and artificers have made a practice of spending the night on its marble floor in hope of inspiration. Some of Breland's greatest minds through the ages have attributed breakthroughs to a night in the temple — the elder Merrix d'Cannith credited a stay there with the insight that led to the creation of the warforged. The temple staff represents the broad spectrum of scientific study, and if they do not know the answer to a question they can almost certainly find someone who does. The ordained clergy include experts, wizards, loremasters, and bards as well as clerics, and position in the hierarchy has nothing to do with character class or field of expertise — only knowledge.
The Bridge connects Breland Spire to Dalannan Tower in a long, arcing, covered span. Shops line one side — bookstores, paper makers, clothing and equipment vendors catering to students. The opposite wall is covered with notices: announcements of campus events, job opportunities, items for sale, rooms for rent. It functions as the social spine of student life.
The Commons sits pleasantly atop Breland Spire — a large open-air plaza with a commanding view of the neighboring towers and the lower reaches of the city. Every morning, vendors wheel their carts up and offer a mouth-watering variety of food from a dozen different cuisines, from Karrnathi sausage to Talentan kebabs. The offerings are hardly haute cuisine, but they are authentic and generally delicious.
Shava House is a small academic commune on campus, originally built as faculty housing for professors without families. It has evolved into an intentional community of scholars with a shared focus on Xen'drik history, sharing meals heavily laden with academic discourse.
Leadership and Culture
The University Master is Larrian ir'Morgrave, a descendant of the founder. The Korranberg Chronicle has noted, more than once, that his periodic statements pledging to end the criminal activities occurring within the university have yet to produce any substantive action.
Faculty culture is competitive and incentive-driven. Morgrave rewards visibility: the professor who brings back relics, generates headlines, attracts donors, and claims credit for discoveries advances faster than the careful scholar with impeccable methods and no press coverage. Grant competition is constant, museum space is contested, and the politics of publication credit are taken seriously. Ethics are not absent, but they are enforced inconsistently and often only after controversy can no longer be managed quietly.
Students from wealthy Brelish and Khorvairian families treat Morgrave as a social credential and a network access point. Serious researchers treat it as a patron institution whose support can make or break careers. Both populations coexist, usually without much friction, because they want different things from the same institution.
UNIVERSITY CONTACTS
Your contact at Morgrave — the person who manages the relationship between you and the university — might be: an overworked department head who doesn't quite know what to make of you but gives you work to keep you busy; a career bureaucrat who insists you file paperwork in multiple offices to get anything done; a junior professor who might be more interested in selling plundered artifacts than in actual research; a department secretary who thinks you're a great deal more interesting than any of the regular faculty; an erudite dean who believes you have tremendous potential and urges you on to greater endeavors; an energetic librarian or museum curator who addresses every question with disproportionate enthusiasm; a tired senior professor whose only joy in academia is seeing what you bring back from your adventures; or an eager researcher who wants to come with you on every expedition because second-hand reports are always incomplete and unsatisfying.
Expeditions and Field Work
Morgrave is one of the primary drivers of organized Xen'drik exploration, using Sharn's proximity to the continent as a structural advantage no inland university can replicate. Both Morgrave and the Wayfinder Foundation send teams to Xen'drik on a regular basis; the relationship between the two institutions is close enough that a letter of recommendation from Morgrave carries weight with the Foundation.
In practice, many "university expeditions" are joint ventures between professors, private backers, and contracted specialists, with Morgrave providing institutional legitimacy and a paper trail that can be shaped after the fact. Adventurers, guides, translators, ward-breakers, and retrieval specialists are regularly employed, though official documents prefer euphemisms. This relationship is useful until it becomes inconvenient, at which point Morgrave will distance itself from the people who did the work.
The pattern of relics disappearing from university custody — into the hands of the Aurum, private collectors, and fences — is an open secret. Morgrave's institutional response is to condemn the practice publicly while operating systems that benefit from the relic economy and provide cover for it.
SCHOLARLY MISSIONS
Work for Morgrave might take the form of: adventurous archaeology, focused on finding ancient artifacts and bringing back what you can; arcane research, acquiring magical knowledge that can only be found outside the university walls; investigative ecology, discovering unknown creatures in the world's wildest reaches; historical research, learning more about Eberron's long history; radical engineering, exploring new scientific fields beyond the birth of the warforged; or pure exploration, charting the poorly mapped areas beyond the heartland of the Five Nations and understanding distant cultures.
Flamewind
The gynosphinx Flamewind is not officially affiliated with Morgrave but lives there and spends much of her time in its libraries and museums. She has the body of a giant lion marked with orange stripes on deep-black fur; when she moves, those stripes ripple like flames. Her great falcon wings are pure black, usually folded over her back. She has the head and face of a beautiful elf woman with distinctly feline features, and wears jeweled chains of platinum and gold around her neck and forelimbs, with a silver diadem on her brow.
Flamewind arrived in Sharn in 996 YK, discovered by the Carradan Party in the ruins of an ancient city of giants in Xen'drik. The sphinx said she had been waiting for them to take her to "the land of the fiends," and the explorers agreed to provide her with a residence at Morgrave. Upon arrival, she informed the masters of Morgrave that she was waiting for "five doomed souls, whose tragic fall will save this nation."
A scholar of the Draconic Prophecy, Flamewind possesses oracular powers and is one of the few non-dragons to have studied the Prophecy. She cannot be pressed for information; she gives what she wants, when she wants, and she never explains her cryptic proclamations. She has been known to attend parties and theatrical events when not reading in the library. According to Professor Cord Ennis's paper "The Sphinx in the Library," Flamewind may be in Sharn because she knows it is a nexus of elements she wants to observe or influence — but between those key events, she is simply enjoying studying this time and place, so alien to her own.
She never provides information on mundane topics such as the Boromar Clan's dreamlily shipments or who will win the next Race of Eight Winds.
Key Relationships
University of Wynarn. Morgrave's primary rival. The oldest university in the Five Nations, more prestigious, and the institution whose administrators refer to Morgrave as "an institute of learning, relic hunting, and grave robbing." Wynarn is more staid and stable, training respected scholars as opposed to adventurers. Yet Morgrave is somehow more famous — a fact that stings. Wynarn likely has stronger schools of law, political science, government, and economics.
Library of Korranberg. Allied in purpose, stratified in prestige. The greatest repository of general knowledge in Khorvaire. Korranberg scholars look down on Morgrave, but the two institutions share the common cause of knowledge and cooperate when Morgrave's resources are insufficient for a given task.
The Tower of the Twelve. For many Morgrave faculty, the idea of pursuing research under the auspices of the Twelve is a cherished dream. Some have had the opportunity; many others nurture connections to the Twelve in hopes of securing that honor. Those connections can give a group access to powerful magic and the other resources of the Twelve.
Wayfinder Foundation. Extensive and practical. The Foundation funds expeditions to distant locales; Morgrave provides scholarly legitimacy and a talent supply chain. The Foundation's Sharn liaison, Hendra ir'Kavay, is a wealthy socialite whose interest in ancient history is largely financial. Her office operates in Korran-Thiven in Upper Central.
The Arcane Congress. Arcanix-trained mages view Morgrave's methods with disdain — Morgrave encourages students to personalize their verbal and somatic components in ways that Arcanix considers borderline irresponsible. But Morgrave's eclectic approach still produces results, and the two institutions maintain a relationship of grudging mutual awareness.
The Aurum. Morgrave has Aurum backers. Concordians fund expeditions, sponsor collectors, and — in some cases — serve as the destination for relics that disappear from university custody. The relationship is natural, mutually useful, and rarely discussed openly.
Playing a Morgrave Character
As a Morgrave student, you are not yet an adventurer — you have talent, but you are learning. Consider how your background ties in. As a noble, you might be an entitled rich kid who thinks you are better than everyone else. As an urchin, did you somehow earn a scholarship, or are you literally sneaking into your classes? As a criminal, you could be the daughter of a Boromar crime boss, or an entrepreneur selling dreamlily to the nobles. A charlatan might be a brilliant drama student or an undercover spy. An entertainer could be a prodigy whose talent is only just emerging. A Morgrave story is about coming of age and unlocking your potential — think about your background as a way to set up the person you are becoming, as opposed to representing adventures you have already had.
Faculty and staff also make excellent adventure hooks. A patron from Morgrave might serve as a trainer for field-useful skills. The publisher of the Sharn Inquisitive, Haftak ir'Clarn, whose offices are in the University District, frequently hires adventurers to bring him exciting stories.